BOOKS 79 Messrs. O'Hara, Saroyan, Duhamel, Wilson I T looks as though John O'Hara were going to go his own bitter way and bad ce to anyone . who tries to stop him. The latest exhibit in what may be called the Sourpuss School of American Literature is "Hope of Heaven." In this thirty-five-thousand- word novelette the hero makes a thou- sand Hollywood dollars a week, is quite a hand (bit rough, though) with the girls, and calls waitresses by their first names. You'd think he'd be pretty com- placent, but actually he is sore as a pup about everything and is always order- ing, in the grimmest, curtest way you can imagine, corned-beef hash with poached egg. His attitude toward life, as the heroine says, is "To hell with it." Now, just why Malloy (that's his name) should be so long in the face and so ready to growl "Wanna make sump'm ottavit?" whenever any other male comes along is not made clear. You've got to accept Mr. O'Hara's glowering heroes as given. "Hope of Heaven" has to do with Mr. Malloy's love affair with Peggy Henderson; the manner in which her smooth, rascally father disturbs their re- lationship; the tragedy which finally breaks it up; and a fellow named Miller, who has forged some traveller's checks and whom Malloy, for no assignable reason, protects from the law. Just what the whole Miller episode has to do with the story is not transparent to me. It functions, to be sure, as a pretext for gettIng the elder Henderson to Holly- wood, but that's a pretty thin pretext. Put it down to Mr. O'Hara's liking for melodrama and for shady characters, and let it go at that. You might not think it, but I admire 1\;1r. O'Hara as much as I do almost any American writer of his generation. I admire in this book, for instance, his un- relaxing control over the curt rhythms and idioms of our common speech; his capacity for rendering bibulous-erot- ic dialogue; his remarkable talent for drawing certain minor characters- there's an epicene young man in the book who is Something; and his gift for rapid, economical narrative. But it seems to me that all these talents ask to be admired separately, as clever tricks. They are utilized in the service of an bsurd story whose major characters need a good grade-school education, whose construction does not bear an- alysis, and whose emotional tone of pes- simistic irony reminds one of those to- hell-with-the-universe orgies we all indulge in during our adolescence. Mr. O'Hara can write like a streak, but he just won't think, or at any rate he won't think in his novels. The result is that though, as a consequence of his dexterous manipulation of pace and sus- pense, we are genuinely interested in how "Hope of Heaven" is going to turn out just as a story, we don't give a damn about how the characters in it are going to turn out as people. It isn't that they have no stature-Madame Bovary has no stature-but that they are not studied deeply enough in their very limitations. A minor matter: the book is full of that pseudo-portentous detail which was so effective ten years ago but has be- come shiny with wear of late. You know the sort of thIng: "1 put on a new brown double-breasted suit and a blue shirt and brown foulard tie and an old pair of brown Scotch grain brogues." I say this is spinach. Who cares what he put on? Let others write ads for Brooks Brothers, Mr. O'Hara; you go ahead and be a novelist. Still, better read "Hope of Heaven." It's got some fine things in it, the talent is there, the skill is there. May- be it's just something Mr. O'Hara tossed off as a prelude to tackling a real novel. One prefers to assume that. Otherwise we must conclude that there has been no growth since the brilliant "Appoint- ment in Samarra." Otherwise we must conclude that this truculent, self-pitying, adolescent futilitarianism really repre- sents Mr. O'Hara's final and complete view of humanity. I, for one, am not willing to believe this. W ILLIAM SAROYAN'S new surprise package of short stories, as I sup- pose we'd better call them, costs only a quarter. There are twenty-one of these "short romances." This works out to 1.1 9+ cents a short romance, with a sçatter of little squiggly drawings by John Groth thrown in free for nothing. I don't think even a penny arcade, whose wonders and delights have a cer- tain subtle affinity with those of Mr. Saroyan, offers as much for the money. Mr. Saroyan doesn't give you a great deal of time to make up your mind about him, but I have decided temporarily that for me he's best when he's doing his zany act and not so good when he's trying to ì 4: ,, 3 'I;} , , t?,!" :; : , : ::: , ':q-- , ,; , ;, , ,, , , "\ , , ;, _:: ': :>;:, :i:!t:'::, ;l I , ,:,>>",.,"' ' ,',' ' ' M', "t:<% . "s j , ft' . ' ;( . 1 J. '\ '< ; tcj,?', ':";::; , ,' , fJ i ":'7' - I; J?::'. "'; . ,' ..::..;. . 'It> 1,>\; ::::::::::::::.: .":::::'.':: ..' . ' :rf1: -- 'i : ':' " :'tl,[@'1' i.: ,, ; rf. t ::',;: ;>>> : :' <;:,I",;:,:::::"':'f' , .-:':' . . ..........:-:-:-:-_.:.::::: <:::::.:.:.... t ;":1 m?: .... :.:.: H {$ Î(,; r : . >.. ....' \..".,Å l:f : : : :::::::: \ If:, ------:.---.-..-:.:......:": .- "'" ;, , :::;.,;,:,: :;.} f" :/ C\ -" t i :, ::'1' ::..x.:....::}:.. ( :i::)' rl r t:- , : i.':'ý'....'ff.: .::::l1t?..... :....:=., .:::.' :'" k ;*> .,.. ... . .....'...,... .....',...,., !ÆD::: " , :,,:,;:,;:Ii%i}": .. ".. . Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, and-er-Dopey."